Oral tradition

[Shea]

My Roman Lit instructor was saying some very interesting words today. I didn't know that the Iliad and the Oddessy were taken from oral tradition. Everything that he was saying today sounded exactly like what I've learned of how Beowulf came about, right down to even the lyre. I'm still rather new at studing Greek and Roman Literature (I haven't even read any Homer yet, but getting ready to read Virgil's Aneid), but does anyone know if there is a connection between Greeks and Anglo-Saxons, or did both groups just happen to do the same thing? This makes me very curious!

When I have more time, this sounds like a great research project! :D

[crisaor]

A connection? If I understand you correctly, no, of course not. Greeks were much more ancient, the Iliad and the Odyssey were much older than Beowulf. However, you are right, all those books are known today thanks to the oral tradition, which kept those stories alive from generation to generation, until some good souls (Homer and anonymus in this case) put those stories into paper.

Regarding Virgil's Aeneid, the case is somewhat different, as he was instructed to write a play which would depict Rome's foundation in a grand, mythical way, as an effort in order to make the roman civilisation greater. Virgil took the inspiration and literary style from Homer's works, and thus the Aeneid came to be.

[Shea]

Sorry, when I started this I was in a hurry because I had to go to class. I guess what I was asking was if there was any Greek influence on the Anglo-Saxons for them to keep the same traditions. I know that Rome was in England for a bit, but did they use oral tradition too?

It's just that, when I compare the way my Roman lit instructor described oral tradition in Greece, to the way my early Brit Lit teacher described it for the Anglo-Saxons, I felt like I was listening to the same lecture. It was very identical.

[baddad]

Well, the reason those lectures sounded the same is because before general access to the written word.....EVERY TALE was repeated through the generations of every society, in every land , and every era..........again, before the written word. Until the invention of the printing press, even though some knew how to write, and some societies recorded their history, religion, day-to-day life, music, basically every record kept was kept orally, as few had access to any type of written record or the ability read them if they had the opportunity to access them. Often it was the task of Minsterels to spread the word, spread the news between settlements etc. Even in Shakespeare's time little acces to the written word was available to the general population........

[Perdito]

Shea should look at the book "The Singer of Tales" by Albert Lord which explores the concept of oral formulaic poetry.

Others should avoid using the term "the oral tradition" as if it were an extra-cultural and a-historical monolith.

[Shea]

I guess the best thing to do would be to state some of the similarities that I heard (because,sincerely not wanting to be rude, everything stated has been things that I already know).

--Both groups used a lyre.
--Both used a particular meter
--Both groups' minsterels would either travel around or stay in the same "court".
--Both minsterels would change the story a bit to "butter up" the big wigs who were paying them.
--Both minsterels would have memorized the general story, but would make up some lines on the spot.

The one major difference I noted was that the Greeks elaborated on myths, whereas the Anglo-Saxons (quite possibly) elaborated their own history.

But it sounds like I can get quite a few answers from Perdito's book suggestion. Thanks!

[subterranean]

In my country, most of the legends and myths are passed from generation to generation orally, not really coz there wasn't any written word, but because it's the tradition. Parents love to tell these stories before bed time or at noon under the tree.
These stories are either genuinly rooted from local tradition, or influence by stories from India or China, which were originally told by merchants coming from those 2 areas. There are stories about the gods who each control specific thing on earth (e.g. the god of crops, the goddes of fertility etc), monsters, heroes, giants, etc. The pattern is almost the same I think, I mean it's not only consist of a story, but there are also poems, sonnets and songs. And all of these stories have moral messages in them and always end happly, where good guys always win. Interestingly there are some myths which are still "alive" till now and believed as real both by children and adults. Like the myth of this beautiful queen who controls the Java sea, and people come to the Java sea annualy to give offerings to the queen (food, buffalo head, cakes, fruits, etc).

[Shea]

Here's something interesting from the Introduction to the second edition of The Singer of Tales. When Albert Lord went to Yugoslavia in the 30's, he met a farmer who could sing songs of history while playing a gusle, and the songs could last for days and reach fifteen to sixteen thousand lines! They called him the Yugoslav Homer.

I wish I had more free time to study this!

[Perdito]

But bear in mind that this "Yugoslav Homer" had not in any strict sense 'learned' the poem. What he had was a set of formulaic passages that he could combine and vary as he composed.
Lord's great discovery was that common to all oral performances of this kind was repetition. For example, when the poet describes a warrior preparing for battle or a ship voyaging over the sea he will use stock phrases, lines, half-lines, even sometimes whole passages stored in his "word hoard" and available to the poet on a sort of compository auto-pilot. Perhaps the most famous of these phrases are Homer's "wine-dark sea" and "rosy-fingered dawn". For centuries these repetitions were put down to Homer "nodding", i.e. becoming forgetful over the span of such a long poem and repeating himself. In fact, they are the remnants of the oral-formulaic origins of the Iliad and Odyssey.

[Shea]

Oh yes, that was also one of the things my teacher talked about. I'd like to go back and look at Beowulf to see if there are more things of that nature in that poem, but I do know that the Anglo-Saxons used alliteration and meter to aid their memory.

I was just rather impressed that the "Yugoslav Homer" was found in the 1930's!

By the way, Sub, which country are you from? Do you know where I can find some of these stories?

[subterranean]

I'm from Indonesia Shea. I've tried to look for some sites in English about these stories, but most of them are in Indonesia language. I found 2 stories here- the coloured Lake (http://www.geocities.com/kesumawijaya/westjava.html) and here- Golden Cucumber (http://www.geocities.com/kesumawijaya/centraljava.html). These tales were usually told orally to children long time ago.